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He partnered with fellow producer Enrico Dieckmann to form Prana Film in 1921 and hired Henrik Galeen to write the script and F.W. Murnau to direct. The only obstacle standing in the way of...
- This Wasn’T The First Film to Be Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
- It Brazenly Ripped Off The Novel.
- The Look of The Movie Was Inspired by Artist Hugo Steiner-Prag.
- The Vampire Was Played by A Man with An Appropriately Spooky name.
- Some of The Special Effects Were Achieved with Stop-Motion Photography.
- Orlok’s Abode Is Really The Orava Castle in Slovakia.
- Nosferatu Established A time-honored Vampire Trope.
- A Costume Party Followed The Movie’S Premiere.
- Stoker’s Wife Sued The Studio.
- Many Different Soundtracks Have Been Written For Nosferatu.
Stoker’s famous novel earned him some welcome praise, but very little cash. A gothic thriller, Dracula first hit the shelves in 1897. Most reviews were favorable: “Persons of small courage and weak nerves should confine their reading of these gruesome pages strictly to the hours between dawn and sunset,” gushed The Daily Mail. Further praise was he...
In 1921, German artist and architect Albin Grau joined forces with Enrico Dieckmann to establish a new movie company called Prana-Film. A World War I veteran with a keen interest in the occult, Grau’s military service brought him into contact with a Serbian farmer who claimed to be the son of a vampire. The soldier never forgot this story and later...
To direct Nosferatu, Prana-Film tapped F.W. Murnau, a filmmaker renowned for his expressionistic style. At his side was Grau, who served as the movie’s artistic producer and designer. In this capacity, Grau designed everything from the sets to the costumes to Orlok’s makeup. Throughout the process, his guiding light was The Golem, a classic horror ...
Little is known about Max Schreck’s life and film career, a fact to which his biographer, Stefan Eickhoff, can attest. According to Eickhoff, the actor’s colleagues regarded him as a “loyal, conscientious loner with an offbeat sense of humor and a talent for playing the grotesque.” The star of over 40 motion pictures, Schreck is best remembered for...
At one point, Orlok’s coffin closes by itself after the lid levitates off the ground. An early form of stop-motion animation made this possible. By rapidly showing a sequence of still images in which the lid moves closer and closer to its final resting spot, Murnau was able to trick the viewer into thinking that the inanimate object was flying arou...
Nosferatu was mostly filmed on location within the German cities of Lubeck and Wismar. However, the Transylvania scenes were shot in northern Slovakia—a place that was significantly closer to home for Murnau and company than Romania would’ve been. With one exception, all the exterior shots of Orlok’s palace really depict the 700 year-old Orava Cast...
The idea that vampires burn up when exposed to direct sunlight is traceable to this movie. In Dracula, the villain casually walks around outside in broad daylight. According to the novel, solar rays can slightly weaken a vampire, but Stoker never implies that they could kill one. Yet for the sake of a more visually compelling climax, Grau and scree...
In the end, Prana-Film spent more money promoting Nosferatu than actually making it. Grau launched an ambitious, multifaceted marketing campaign that included newspaper ads, expressionist posters, and a steady stream of press coverage. After months of hype, the picture had its premiere at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens on March 4,...
If she’d gotten her way, this movie would have joined Dracula’s Death in the dustbin of film history. Shortly after Nosferatu premiered in Berlin, Florence Stoker—Bram’s widow—received an anonymous package containing one of its promotional posters. Displayed upon this placard was the inflammatory line “Freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” An...
This sort of thing often happens to silent films. When Nosferatu premiered in Berlin, it was accompanied by a live, orchestral score composed by one Hans Erdmann. No recordings of this original soundtrack are known to exist, although a few restorations have been made. Over the years, Nosferatu has also received several alternative scores spanning a...
In creating Nosferatu, Murnau and producers Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau adapted Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) for the screen. Since they could not obtain the copyrights, they tried to evade censorship by simply changing the setting and names of the protagonists.
Enrico Dieckmann is known for Nosferatu (1922), Warning Shadows (1923) and That really old vampire movie (2014).
- Producer
- Enrico Dieckmann
Oct 27, 2022 · The producers, Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau (who also designed the costumes and sets), had screenwriter Henrik Galeen draw on Stoker without obtaining the film rights, which eventually led Stoker’s widow to sue.
- Anton Bergstrom
Jun 3, 2021 · Artistically speaking, the film brings a dark nightmarishly chilling landscape of light and shadow to life. Albin Grau is responsible for making Nosferatu possible. In 1922, Grau started Prana Film with Enrico Dieckmann. Grau was a World War I veteran.
Aug 9, 2022 · Prana Film, the German studio that made "Nosferatu," was founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and an artist named Albin Grau, who had a taste for the occult. The idea of Prana Film was to house a...
